He’ll always be best known as Widespread Panic’s mighty anchor, but Dave Schools has certainly been branching out. He spent most of Panic’s “sabbatical,” as he described it, carrying the low end for the Mickey Hart Band and getting involved with Bob Weir, TRI Studios and the potent scene developing around TRI, Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads and a new collective of Bay Area musicians.
[Photo by Rex Thomson]
Where he still finds time to do albums with the likes of Todd Snider is Schools’s secret, but for a musician still so keenly interested in growth and adding to his musical arsenal, variety comes with the territory.
Hidden Track caught up with Schools recently to talk Panic, Mickey, TRI and Weir, John Fogerty, Jerry Joseph and whatever else came to mind. We posted Part One yesterday and today we share the more Panic-centric part of our chat.
HIDDEN TRACK: Let’s talk about Panic. A lot was made about the band’s hiatus but you guys weren’t really away for long and it sounds like everyone’s rejuvenated. Did we all make too much of the quote-unquote Widepsread Panic hiatus?
DAVE SCHOOLS: Yeah, absolutely. I hate the word hiatus, because it sounds like a medical condition. I like the word sabbatical because that’s what it was. The spring tour we did was brief and I think we took a lot of chances in the way we played our songs if we didn’t do a lot with the variety of the songs. But for all your setlist armchair aficionados, it really is how we’re playing ‘em – don’t just look at the songs we played and dismiss it for that.
HT: Panic’s covered so much ground and been through so much, more so and for longer than most of your peers. What else do you want to do with the band? What are Widespread Panic’s goals?
DS: The opportunities to play in other countries are cool. We’ve been to Japan and we do these Mexico getaways. I’d love to go play in Russia, and more in Japan and go back to Australia. Overall, for bands like Panic, the ambiance of the location really affects the playing. There’s still nothing that competes with seeing a band in an intimate setting, so I’d like to see where that goes and do more of that around the world.
I’d also love to see Panic to start to utilize more of the new technology. We have Andy Tennille on tour with us generating content, doing videos and short films and stuff for the social media platforms that none of us in the band really give a darn about because we just don’t understand it. So it’s good to have someone who understand where it’s going and what’s working, and if that person can be a fly on the wall and catch the cool moments, I’m all for it. We don’t necessarily have to learn it ourselves, but if we can be ourselves and understand and accept the ways these models are changing, we’ll be OK. Maybe the next step is not making records and not spending 12 months working on a record, but dashing off some songs or putting our content in whatever format makes sense this week.
HT: It’s been interesting to see the music industry, while fractious, continue to admire the jamband model of stemming everything to the unique live show experience. Is this the most sustainable model, you think?
DS: Well, like I said, there’s still no substitute for being there. That model will always be the same, as long as there is music being played that is participatory. If you ask anyone in the jamband world – and God, I hate that term, but let’s face it, it stuck – about that eye-to-eye contact, the visceral thing of performing and how sometimes you can unite an audience and a band into one organism and create a monstrous effect on what’s going on musically, it just becomes this continual upping the ante of energy.
You’re just not going to get that from streaming HD video, no matter how good it is. Some guy might jump off his couch and yell, fuck yeah, that’s my favorite song, but you’re never going to substitute for how it feels when you’re there and it’s live and everybody’s rocking. That’s why we come back. Those moments of connectivity that make you feel like you’re adding.
HT: The Wood tour was received really well. Do you think you guys will continue to do stuff like that and experiment with how to present yourselves live?
DS: It’s interesting because we all had different ideas for how the Wood tour would turn out. Some of those ideas were met, and some were dashed and were replaced by other, organic, cool things. There are songs we would have never have tried if we weren’t sitting down with wooden instruments, so that feeling of accessibility and the availability of new material was amazing, and has carried into our return to touring.
I think if you stick to one thing too long, you forget that you have permission to do whatever you want. The audience gives you permission to at least be open-minded about things. Do we have permission to do a Jimmy Cliff ballad instead of a reggae tune? Can Phish do a Gillian Welch tune? Well, yes, you should expect that, or at least you shouldn’t be surprised.
HT: You guys will be playing the Interlocken Festival and backing John Fogerty during one of your nights. Are you excited? How did this come together?
DS: I don’t know how it came together but I’m beside myself excited. Some of the first 45s I had were Creedence songs. My Dad used to take me to Standard Drug and they had the top 40 singles and albums there, right at the drug store, that’s how cool it was in those days. I’d been playing Deep Purple and he got really sick of that and he didn’t really dig it, but he did like Creedence, and I had Proud Mary and Down on the Corner and all of them.
It was a huge thing for me. It was a big part of where everything came from for me musically, there’s just no way I could have avoided it. So for me to find out we’re going to be backing up John Fogerty, I mean wow. Does that mean we get to play Keep On Choogling for 10 minutes? Guys, we better fucking rehearse! This guy was a huge part of everything I am, these singles that were released and the four- and five-year-old Dave Schools that got to listen to them when it wasn’t the oldies station. So yeah, I’m excited [laughs]!
HT: Any idea what you’re going to play with him?
DS: We haven’t gotten there yet. I’ll play whatever he wants, as long as we get to do Run Through the Jungle and Keep On Chooglin and draw ‘em out 10 minutes.
HT: Definitely 10 minutes?
DS: [laughs] Make it 12. I mean, hey, Jimmy can unwind a solo that long.
HT: I did want to mention the new archival release, those Oak Mountain shows from 2001. Any memories of that year come to mind? So much had happened and was about to change for you guys.
DS: I don’t recall all that much but Oak Mountain was becoming a scene. The Birmingham powers that be felt it was dangerous to the youth of Alabama, I remember. Why that was worse than 300,000 people drinking from open containers at Talladega, I’ll never know, but they were putting their microscope on Oak Mountain and the whole thing. But I do remember great shows, enthusiastic crowds, it felt like a special place for us, not unlike Red Rocks in that we’d do multiple nights and get pretty far out. We really did put our work boots on for those shows.
HT: When will we see another Widespread Panic album?
DS: In the short term I can’t say. I can say there are new ideas bouncing around and we make take a different approach to presenting them, and we may tend to work on new things more on stage, instead of in a studio, more than we have in the last 10 years. But there are a lot of ideas flowing through the pipeline. JoJo’s Missing Cats record, there are some great songs on there. A lot of our side projects are these experimental kitchens for new ideas, and maybe someone’s fully realized idea for a solo project is something Panic can expand on even more. So there is stuff happening. I’m not sure you’ll hear much of it on the upcoming run, but summer tour definitely.
HT: Is there anything else you’re working on that we can highlight?
DS: I’m talking a lot with Jerry Joseph and I’m slowly but surely working on him to make a gospel record. It’s a side of him that his fans understand and a side of his music that deserves to be brought out. Maybe that means plundering his vast catalog for some of the more gospel-y things, or maybe it means pairing him with gospel greats, or maybe it means having him dig through old spiritual records and pursuing it a little farther down the rabbit hole.
HT: I can definitely see the fit. And speaking of Jerry, is there a future for Stockholm Syndrome?
DS: One can never say. I know Eric and Wally are busy supporting Eric Burdon. Danny Louis is busy with the Mule and I’m juggling a lof of things. Jerry’s got a new baby, but he’s just one to crank out great songs and perform. You never know.
